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Comment by tiahura | Hacker News Reader

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Like optimizing and making sure people see ads?

This comment has to be sarcasm

> Couldn’t the geniuses debating whether the universe is expanding at 50 or 51 mph be put to work doing something a little more useful?

You do know that musing about the useless photoelectric effect is how we got a lot of modern technology?

At what point did we miss that civilisations that uncover milestones in basic physics tend to reap the rewards thereof?

How many billions were spent on that musing?

> How many billions were spent on that musing?

If one considers the leisure that the time’s thinkers were afforded with estates and enterprises underneath them, I wouldn’t be surprised if the sum total of the photoelectric investigations came to billions inflation adjusted.

This is one of the most harmful attitudes to come out of otherwise smart people in Silicon Valley. Dismissing any effort that does not bear immediate, tangible fruit, failing to follow a chain of causality to long term benefits and discounting the intellect of people working on such efforts.

For example, a similar attitude would have dismissed J.J. Thompson's work on cathode rays and electrons in the late 1800's, and would have seen his intellect directed to steam engines and steel work. That would have seen a delay in the very technology ecosystem that enabled the parent to post their comment.

Root cause of that attitude is the 3 month metrics reporting required by Wall St.

It is arbit and the largest corps that do research fully understand it can generate these counter productive attitudes generating deadline based superficial progress.

Which is why they try to keep their R&D people separate but it is never long lasting cause its all built on top of contradictions.

You want to build something long lasting look at how the Vatican survives not at how corporations/nations/empires survive. But getting science orgs to be that open minded is very tricky given all the baggage the Church has accumulated.

Interesting doesn’t necessarily mean important. There are an infinite number of potential scientific endeavors, I don’t think it’s unseemly to suggest that a field’s likeliness to improve humanity’s quality of life should be a factor in determining funding.

I think any advances in basic science is worthwhile. You can’t predict when or how it will become useful. Quantum mechanics or relativity were probably pretty useless for a few decades after their discovery.

Sure, but we don't have unlimited time and money. Prioritization is obviously a necessity, and therefore I think the OP's point stands. Considering potential tangible rewards shouldn't be seen as a taboo factor in that calculation.

Sure. But we also need a certain base level of research that has zero potential rewards we can imagine now but pushes the boundaries of our knowledge further out. Because a few decades or even centuries later it will become useful.

Evolution is search. These projects create demand for high tech manufacturing, this alone is a net positive. The money isn't burned in a pit, it is spent employing people.

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Basic research should be funded like defense. Allocate a certain percentage of GDP.

Which is ironic given where this is posted. Do all startups yield a net result? Either to the VCs or the humanity?

What is "more useful" than understanding how the universe, we all live in, works at a fundamental level?

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